A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to chat with The Edupreneur Podcast. A quick 30 minute conversation about the Palm Pilot program I rolled out in Saudi Arabia in 2002, Gamification of Education and Global Education. Always a great time talking with...

One of my goals moving into the high school technology coordinator position was to start a radio club with students. Now 3 months into the school year and we’re learning a lot and producing some good quality shows. It has been fun working through issues with students. We had feedback in a couple episodes and finally figured out it was because the equipment was grounded properly. We’ve played with different mic set-ups and our producers have been learning how to run the mixer. We are run it as an after school club which is hard as students, like most everywhere else, are involved in many different activities. We started out with 22 students signed up and have had a good group of 10 that have settled in to produce shows. Music Monday: Every Monday these DJs and producers spin their favorite hits from up and coming artists. Mostly found on YouTube they contact musicians via Twitter to get permission to play their music on the podcast. So far they haven’t been turned down yet and they’re having fun playing a mix of music genre being products by amatures today. Tuesday Round-Up: We started the year with three shows and a couple weeks ago the students realized they were overlapping content and merged two shows into one. Tuesday Round-Up is the latest talk on the ISB campus. Kids discuss the latest news, the latest decisions by admin (moving from late start to early release was a heated debate). They also interview different students and talk about their lives as high school students. I find it interesting to hear their take on some issues at school. The latest episode even has 3 senior boys talking about how much they are going to miss their families when they go away to college next year….something I don’t think they would admit to their parents. 🙂 They are also learning how to build a community around the content. We started with a Facebook Group but then realized a Facebook Page was more what the show needed so now with over 120 members the next step is try and find ways to engage them more with the shows. We’ll see what the kids come up with but it’s been fun sitting back and watching them sort through how to make content on the web and build a community around it. Have a listen, join the...

Last week David Carpenter and I kicked off season 3 of the Shifting Our Schools podcast. It’s taken us a while to get this season going and I’m not short on the excuses why, so I won’t even bother getting started. Needless to say we are started and we’re excited to be back for a third season. As usual I can’t keep well enough alone and decided to push the podcast just one step further this year. So now not only can you listen to use live and chat on the website, or download the podcast later via iTunes. This year we’re also going to try to open up the Skype lines to you listeners out there and allow you to Skype in with questions or comments during the show. We’ll see how this goes and hopefully will be able to make it fly this year. We’re live every other Wednesday at 8:00pm Bangkok Time (GMT+7). The best way to keep posted on the show is by following me on Twitter. Each show revolves around an essential question which we try to stay focused on (really we do). I’m excited for our next show and if you are at an IB school or an IB teacher you surely won’t want to miss: Can the IB curriculum be shifted? I have strong feeling frustrations about the IB program as a technology person in my role. We’re excited to have Justin Medved joining us from Canada and it will be a great opportunity to open up the Skype Lines and see what others have to say on the topic. I hope you decide to follow us this year as we have some fun from Bangkok, Thailand to Casablanca, Morroco. SOS Podcast Links: Subscribe to iTunes (Free) Diigo Show link Group Google Calendar of Show Times Blog RSS...

The second season of Shift Our Schools kicks off tonight as David and I along with Kim Cofino reflect about the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai. We’re changing things up this year starting with a new website dedicated to the podcast. Click on the link above or the picture to head to the website. We are in iTunes and ready to go! Click here will take you to our iTunes page where you can subscribe to the podcast to be downloaded automatically. Once again this year we will broadcast live on the web. (Click on the Live page on the website). We have also set up a Skype account for the podcast and will try and have live call-ins for those that want to join the conversation. We’ll see how this goes in the first couple of weeks and decide whether or not to keep the feature (link down the sidebar on the website). We’ve also started a Diigo group so that listeners can share links around our essential questions. Please bookmark them with the episode number that the link refers to. As usual each podcast will revolve around an essential question. Here is just a taste of some of the questions we’ll be struggling with this year. Where do you start the shift? How to infuse information literacy throughout the curriculum? How to shift wehn the administration is not on board? How do you shift administrtors? What are some shifted practices? Why do I podcast? It’s a different conversation, it’s talking through rather than writing through your thoughts. Honestly I was not planning on doing the podcast again this year, but I had people at NECC and at Learning 2.008 tell me they were waiting for us to start the show again. So, I do it not only for my own reflection and thought process but for those that listen as well. It’s about sharing ideas, thoughts, and knoweldge and I hope that is what we do on some level. You can get a schedule of the podcasts on the website. We record live at 7pm Bangkok Time (GMT+7) or 8pm China time (GMT+8). The podcast focus on International Schools and International Education, we hope you enjoy this small glimpse into the world in which we...

Last night we recorded our third episode of the Shifting Our Schools podcast. A podcast started by David Carpenter and I a couple weeks ago. David and I have been planning the podcast since about September on a Google Doc. A huge thanks to David who has done most of the behind the scenes work on lining up guests, working through the format, etc. We talked about the format we wanted to use and decided to try and focus each episode on an essential question (EQ). Our first three episodes have focused on: Why Shift? How does making connections affect learning? Passion for learning, how to nurture and grow it? We wanted our podcast to focus on international educators and wanted to do it at a time that was convenient for us in the GMT+ area of the world. 🙂 We have some great educators out here and I love just getting the opportunity to talk with them around a question. It’s difficult as you can’t really talk about one aspect of change without looking at a larger picture. David does a great job of keeping us focused on the EQ. Personally, I like to talk and when I have people like Julie Lindsay, Clay Burell, Justin Medved, just to name a few who have joined us already, on Skype for a conversation, that’s what we do! We’ve had some great conversations and we have a great line up of more guesses coming your way. We have already laid out enough EQs to get us through June. We podcast every other week and only 1 of the 3 have actually taken place on the Thursday’s we have assigned. But you know…it’s our podcast and we’re flexible. This week we moved to Friday because of Chinese New Year. It’s about having fun, about having conversations, and about making connections and that’s what we want our podcast to be. We’ve been lucky enough to have EARCOS (regional organization of international schools in Asia) help us out by sending out an e-mail to all Heads of Schools in the EARCOS region. You can take part in our podcast live via Ustream or download the podcast either by the RSS feed or by iTunes (If you’re in China you need to use this link). On February 21st Justin Hardman from Hong Kong International School will join us to talk about expanding the learning...